


To Try, To Err, To Try Again

by theLiterator



Series: Forgiveness is Divine [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Background Titans, Christmas, Dick Grayson is Dead, Family, Gen, Gift Giving, Knitting, the farm in smallville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3883549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theLiterator/pseuds/theLiterator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What <i>is</i> this?" Damian demanded, staring at the woolen items in the parcel he'd snatched from Tim. Tim glared up at him from where Damian had shoved him, down half a flight of stairs before he could check his momentum.</p><p>"They're gloves," Tim said. "They're a gift. Give them back."</p><p>"They're <i>hideous</i>," Damian said, tossing the items down the stairs and retreating back into his room, slamming the door obnoxiously behind him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Try, To Err, To Try Again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InsolentWitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsolentWitch/gifts).



> Based on the Fic_Promptly prompt: "DCU, Tim +/ Any, beware Geeks bearing painstakingly hand-crafted gifts."

"What _is_ this?" Damian demanded, staring at the woolen lumps in the parcel he'd snatched from Tim. Tim glared up at him from where Damian had shoved him, down half a flight of stairs before he could check his momentum.

"They're gloves," Tim said. "They're a gift. Give them back."

"They're _hideous_ ," Damian said, tossing the items down the stairs and retreating back into his room, slamming the door obnoxiously behind him.

Tim sighed and collected the gloves with their bright-blue sweep of wings; a Christmas gift for Barbara, who'd asked for them especially, just as Alfred poked his head around the corner, checking to be sure they weren't killing each other.

Tim shrugged in response to Alfred's questioning eyebrow, and Alfred clicked his tongue disapprovingly before retreating. "It's not my fault he's a nosy _brat_!" Tim called after him, but there wasn't any response.

Tim didn't see Damian for _days_ after that, which was actually pretty nice right up until it wasn't, and he dropped his needles four times in an hour because the house was settling and he had convinced himself it was Damian with a knife, ready to do murder.

"What's wrong with him," Tim asked Alfred at lunch around a mouthful of tuna melt. "He's not trying to kill me anymore."

"Have you ever knit _him_ anything, Master Timothy?" Alfred asked.

Tim scoffed. "And let him burn it and then throw the ashes in my face? Not likely."

"Hmm," Alfred said.

Tim stared at his tuna melt and was suddenly not hungry for lunch after all.

The thing was, it was _knitting season_. He had too many people to knit for, and too little time to do it, and knitting for _Damian_ was out of the question. People like Babs and Alfred would appreciate the effort that went into his handmade presents, and people like Kon and Cassie might not, but they were his best friends, and they _deserved_ good, proper Christmas presents, even if neither of them were really big Christmas people.

And Damian was just--

Damian. Murderous little shithead who didn't deserve _anything_ because he'd probably ruin it. As if sensing his thoughts, Alfred (the cat), came right up to him and started delicately licking between his toe-pads, making sure to extend each claw to full, wicked length for Tim to admire.

He dropped his head back against the plush chair he claimed for his own every knitting season and groaned.

"No," he said aloud, and crossed his arms over his chest, but already he was feeling pretty terrible about the whole thing, because Kon and Cassie might be his _friends_ but Damian Wayne was _Robin_ and Tim knew which one was a higher priority on the handcrafted gift totem. "I don't want to."

He tossed his yarn back into the bin and kicked it for good measure, glaring at the cat.

"Fine," Tim told Alfred minutes later, standing in the kitchen with his arms crossed over his chest. "I give. What do I make him?"

"What does he like?"

"Murder," Tim said, but that was really very not true anymore, and Alfred didn't deign to humor him with a response.

Tim drove himself to his favorite yarn store and glared at the shelves. It was knitting season, so the store was packed; at least three other people running hands over skeins of yarn and murmuring to one another about what they were going to make.

Tim stared at the colorful wall of fiber and bit his lip and stomped his foot, pretending he was grinding Damian's face into the floor. The kid had tried to _kill_ him, he didn't need a knitted gift, he didn't _deserve_ \--

"Wow, you look pissed," one of the women who worked the shop said cheerfully. "And it's not even Thanksgiving yet. What's up?"

"I have to make something for someone I hate," Tim told her.

"Oh, eww. That's awful," she said. "Mother-in-law?"

"What?" Tim blurted. "I'm not married."

She shrugged. "Worth a guess. What does the person like?"

"I don't know," Tim said. "He likes animals, I guess. Sneaking up on people. Murder."

She laughed. "I'm sure he isn't that awful. If you don't know what he likes, then what about what he needs?"

Tim frowned at her. "His dad is rich, he doesn't _need_ anything."

"A hat's a good bet, usually, and you can probably put one together in a couple hours. We've got some patterns here, for like, balaclavas with animal ears, or these things with the long scarf-ends and the animal pockets. Pick a nice chunky yarn and you can have something by Thanksgiving."

Tim stared at her, and at the pattern rack she'd indicated, and he nodded. "Thanks," he said faintly. "You're amazing."

Tim did have it done by Thanksgiving, which was being hosted in Smallville this year, and he wrapped it up and put an enormous self-stick bow on it, because he absolutely drew the line at getting the hateful creature an actual Christmas present on Christmas.

He'd give it to him after dinner.

Damian was still steadfastly ignoring Tim's existence, which was exacerbated by the fact that Ma Kent had seated them next to each other, and the fact that they were wearing matching sweater-vests because Alfred was _still_ of the opinion that Tim was in the wrong here, and Tim spent the entire meal fidgeting from restlessness and the fear that no murder attempts meant something even bigger was coming.

He was so twitchy, in fact, that he didn't really wait for Kon and Ma Kent to be completely gone after dinner before he dug out the wrapped gift and thrust it at Damian. "Here," he snapped. "Jesus, just stop ignoring me."

Damian scanned the gift with the sort of wariness that normal people reserved for day old pizza left on the counter or maybe nuclear warheads, before he drew a knife from somewhere and used it to slice open the paper. Ma and Kon were obnoxiously trying to make themselves invisible and failing miserably, but Damian was doing an excellent job of ignoring them, so Tim followed suit. It was stupid how antsy he was over this. Tim had used chunky acrylic yarn and hadn't bothered to knit a gauge or, you know, measure Damian's head (when would he? He could have checked the uniform files to see if Bruce had it saved somewhere, but it wasn't like Damian would actually wear the thing.) so it wasn't like he'd put his best effort into this, not like with Kon's carefully, perfectly constructed socks, or even Alfred's armwarmers which were designed to be modular and were fire-proof, just in case.

Damian discarded the box and wrapping haphazardly to the side, and held up the animal hat-cowl-balaclava-thing Tim hadn't even bothered to pay for a pattern for, just eyeballed and put together based on logic and what felt right.

"What _is_ this?" Damian demanded.

"It's a hat," Tim said. "It's a gift," he added, just in case Damian had somehow managed to miss that, despite the wrapping paper and sticky bow. Tim wondered if he should point out that the bow had stuck to Damian's pressed dress slacks and decided not to. It humanized him, which was really necessary these days.

"It's _hideous_ ," Damian spat, but he didn't throw it on the floor with the wrapping before he stormed off.

Tim sighed and bent to scoop up the wrapping detritus so Ma Kent wouldn't have to.

"Land's sake," Ma Kent murmured. "That poor boy. His mother should have--" She sighed and shook her head. "Recycling's still in the garage, Tim, dear."

"I tried, dammit," Tim muttered furiously to himself as he went out to the garage with the paper and cardboard. "It isn't _fair_ , I _tried._ "

Tim made his way back through the house to the patio where everyone was huddled, staring out at the fields where the younger kids were building snowmen and forts and tussling off the energy the enormous meal had given them, taking a beer from the cooler and ignoring the good-natured jibes about his age.

Damian was nowhere to be found, and Tim was absolutely relieved about that and not, in fact, still in fear for his life.

***

"You're an asshole," Jason said, three days later. Tim glanced over his shoulder and was relieved to see that the Red Hood was domino-only that night, and therefore much less likely to try to break Tim's arms and/or puncture his other extraneous organs.

"Coming from you, that's practically a compliment," Tim said acerbically.

Jason snorted. "Come here, sit next to uncle Red and tell him _all_ about it."

"About what?" Tim asked, genuinely confused for a few seconds, until Jason threw the damned hat-thing down in front of Tim.

"He told you?" Tim demanded, feeling betrayed. "That's ridiculous. That's--"

"Cassandra figured it out, and she told Stephanie who called Roy who told me," Jason informed him. "I stole it from his room."

"Look, I knit that by hand..."

"You knit me stretchy wrist guards that can hold neat little tranq darts you designed for me yourself," Jason said. "This? Not your best work. You hurt his feelings worse with this piece of half-assed crap than you did by letting on that you hand-craft presents for people in the first place."

Tim glared at him. "He tried to kill me!"

Jason hauled him up by the front of his costume and brought them close enough to kiss. "I slit your throat and watched you bleed," Jason said, low and hoarse and menacing. Tim shuddered. "He pushed you off a dinosaur. You didn't even break your wrist."

Tim shut his eyes.

"Fix this," Jason said coolly. "Or I'm calling in the big guns."

"You wouldn't!"

Jason shrugged. "I'm sick of hearing everyone bitch about his bad mood. I'll _happily_ set aside my massive ideological and personal disputes with B if it means no more bitching in la Casa del Hood, got it?"

Tim nodded frantically.

***

"For a craft that supposedly originated in the Middle East," Tim announced generally as he entered his yarn shop, "I am sure having a hell of a time finding patterns that are even vaguely Middle-Eastern."

The same woman from last time was at the counter, and she grinned at him and shook her head. "There's this afghan on Ravelry I've always wanted to try."

"I don't know if he's an afghan kind of person," Tim said. "But my brother said I had to do _something_ or he'd tell my... parent."

"Well," the woman said. "No matter if he's an afghan person, a hand-knitted afghan would probably go a long way to fixing whatever it is you need to fix."

Tim shook his head, then shrugged, then nodded. "It's just, usually I know exactly what to make, I add in like, modifications, things they like, things they _need_."

"Does he have an afghan already?" she asked.

Tim shook his head, picturing the spartan austerity of Damian's bedroom in the Manor. "He... doesn't. No."

"Well," she said. "There you go."

***

Tim was careful this time. He took the pattern the woman had found on Ravelry and modified it, working for several hours at redesigning the joins so there would be a bigger border between each piece, so he'd just have a sea of black with bright splashes of color, and then he worked out a quick, easy way to add pockets. Damian, he felt, could always use pockets. He liked, more than anything, making deadly weapons appear from nowhere.

He only had a few weeks to finish the damned thing, and he set aside his other projects in order to do so, knitting constantly, so much so that at one point Kon was teasing him.

A few hours later, Kon had a set of needles and the black yarn Tim was using as his base and he was joining the first two hexagons together.

A few hours after that, half the Titans were in Ma Kent's living room; most of them were working on simpler knitted things, but Stephanie had a black hexagon in her lap, and Ma Kent herself was working on a colorwork piece while Kon complained that his notes for making the pockets were incomplete at best.

By the end of the first week, Alfred had contributed two hexagons and many, many snacks, Cassandra had taught herself how to knit just by watching them and was working on a matching pair of socks in the same black splashed with bright gold, red, and green, and Alfred the Cat had gotten his fur into everything even though they tended to meet up at the farm in Smallville.

Jason showed up with Roy and Kori, and when Ma Kent offered him needles, he said "No, I've got something better in mind," which made all of them shift warily except Ma Kent, who beamed and brought him cocoa.

Tim blocked the finished product on December 22nd and spent the next 48 hours dealing with a Blackgate breakout, so he was exhausted and bloody and woozy when he collapsed into his bed on the night before Christmas.

Damian was the youngest member of the household, but he'd also loudly decried Christmas and holidays in the past, so Tim wasn't surprised to be the first one awake in the kitchen after Alfred, but he _was_ surprised to find his afghan missing.

A shot of adrenaline had his heart racing, but he had the presence of mind to ask Alfred before he panicked, and Alfred merely gestured in the direction of the den, where they’d set up the tree. "Everything is taken care of, Master Timothy," he said, and Tim nodded, then hugged Alfred on impulse. "Thanks, for, you know, everything. Not just this."

Bruce had to drag Damian from his room, and he came protesting into the den where Alfred and Tim were waiting for the rest of the family to show up.

Jason came in, trailing Koriand'r and Roy again, and Cassandra and Stephanie eventually made their way downstairs, still looking exhausted from the break-out, and Alfred handed out cocoa as they chatted and settled in.

Damian seemed to be wary of all the eyes on him, but he sat ramrod-straight in the easy chair and stared balefully at all of them, Titus at his feet and Alfred in his lap.

Everyone crowded around to open up presents, and hugs were exchanged between them along with gifts. Tim had had to buy a couple of his presents, but everyone knew why, so no one even teased him for it, though Damian's eyes watched narrowly, like he was cataloging everything, and finally, Cassandra was clutching a tiny package to her chest that must have been her socks, and the large Alfred-wrapped gift under the tree that was Damian's were all that was left. Tim leaned forward to pass it on, but Jason stood up instead and tossed something glinting and metallic at Damian's head, and Damian caught it.

"They’re your baby pictures," Jason said. "Figured you'd like them."

Damian glared at Jason who tossed his hands up in surrender, grinning a flashing, dangerous smile that promised something... _something_.

"Okay," Jason said once the moment had stretched to near-breaking. "Tim's turn. His is also from me, you're welcome."

Tim glared daggers at Jason, but Jason appeared largely immune, and then he handed Damian his present. Damian unwrapped it as carefully and warily as last time, and then set the knife aside to lift the lid, and then the blanket, which he spread all across his lap, ignoring Alfred's hissing protest.

"What..." he traced his fingers across the colorwork, face blank with the non-expression Tim had figured out meant he was feeling something overwhelming that to express might make him seem weak in their eyes, and then he looked up and caught Tim's gaze. "What _is_ this?" he asked, breathless.

"It's an afghan. We all worked on it, except Jason, he was busy with that," Tim said, indicating the metallic thing in Damian's hand still. "And Bruce, because it's not... it's. He was busy. Being Bruce."

Tim hadn't thought to invite him, actually. He wondered if Bruce _could_ knit.

Damian found the pockets, mouth twitching but not quite making it into a smile, and then stood up to spread it across the floor. It had turned out rather larger than the pattern called for, and it spilled over their strewn presents, already discarded, forgotten.

"It's mine?" Damian asked, glancing back at Tim again, and Tim realized that the cold, arrogant tone that was hiding his unsurety here... well. It was familiar.

"Yes," Tim said. "Cass's turn," he added, uncomfortable with the intensity Damian was regarding the afghan with.

Cassandra nodded and passed her own gift across, and the matching socks made Damian's brow furrow, and he shook his head. He dropped them on top of the afghan and left abruptly, and Tim sighed.

"He hurts," Cassandra explained. "It's good. He'll come back."

Tim nodded and Bruce helped Alfred fold the afghan back up.

"You did good," Bruce said. "You tried."

Tim sighed and shrugged off the empty reassurance and went to his room to sulk, and to knit.

***

It was after midnight, and Tim was sleeping fitfully when Damian snuck in, an ancient netbook in his hands and a fierce look of determination on his face. Tim pretended not to notice him, and Damian crawled right into the bed with him, wrapped in something soft and plush and textured.

"What's that?" Tim asked, and Damian flipped open the netbook.

"Jason's present. This computer isn't connected to Father's mainframe, so it should be secure; unless Oracle's looking for it." His smile was just an impression of white glinting in the reflected light of the screen. "She shouldn't be; I bought it in a thrift store while shopping for Christmas gifts."

Tim nodded mutely, and Damian pressed play.

It was a series of clips from security cameras in what appeared to be London, and Tim frowned, studying the people in each of them, looking for the common thread, and then-- then he found it.

There was a man whose face was blurred in every frame, but from behind, he-- well.

 _Well_.

"Son of a bitch," he hissed.

"Yes," Damian said, and he rolled over so that Tim was trapped under the afghan with him. "Exactly."

He shut the netbook and then pressed his lips to Tim's cheek. "Merry Christmas," he said, and it sounded like a threat, like cold arrogance, like _unsurety_ and loneliness and longing, and Tim wrapped his arms around him, tangling them together in handknit comfort.

"Merry Christmas," he replied. "How do you feel about spending New Year's in London?"

Damian snarled into Tim's neck, and Tim pressed a quiet, daring, secret kiss to his temple. "That's what I thought."


End file.
